Why we do the work
Last week I was sitting at my little table on Main Street in Belfast when a woman emerged from a shop. I could tell she was a great lady the moment I saw her. I don’t see auras like some people do but I could feel the goodness and moral beauty emanating from her.
She looked up and our eyes met. Her delicate features were unusually symmetrical. She smiled brightly and approached me, saying, “It’s been years or maybe decades since I had a tarot reading but I feel like I’m being pulled right over to you!”
She paid for a 15-minute reading and as she sat down, mentioned something about synchronicities. She told me she loved to talk about archetypes and look beyond the ordinary. I soon discovered that this woman’s gentle, easy charm couldn’t disguise her sharp intellect and keen perception. Those soft brown eyes saw into my very core! Who was reading who?
It turned out she is a Jungian analyst, still working because she loves her work. She also revealed that she is turning 80 soon, and that I could not believe. While she did look physically younger, it was the freshness of her spirit that struck me. She stayed a few minutes after the reading and we chatted. I basked in her impeccable vibes and was very sorry when she had to go.
As I watched her walk away I thought, “This is why we do the work.”
This is a woman who has been nurturing her own psyche and others’ psyches for decades and it shows. She uses her words with purpose—to bless, to heal, and to prosper. She’s managed to infuse her personality with big-S Self to the point that she glows and flows with what is.
You might be thinking I’m idealizing this lady or just imagining things given that I only talked with her for half an hour. It’s true that I don’t know this woman. I’m telling you what I sensed. I have a nose for spiritual opulence. For me it smells like jasmine and this woman was jasmine-scented. Was it her perfume? Maybe, but I could smell it for a long while after she left.
I was glad to have twenty minutes or so to myself before another client came along. It was as if this woman had opened a little door within me and for those minutes I had access to a higher order of understanding and perception. These weren’t linear thoughts. I had insights, which is funny because one of the insights was that epiphanies, realizations, etc. mean nothing unless you use them to grow in love.
In this mini-vision, I was shown that the woman’s spiritual opulence was built of compounding interest. (Forgive my money metaphors but I’m a Taurus, dammit. Wealth matters.) She had been investing a little every day for years so her spiritual wealth had grown exponentially, according to the laws of the Universe. I don’t know if she’d had any earth-shattering mystical experiences but if she did, they’re not what created her abundant spiritual wealth.
Mystical experiences are only a windfall if they lead to transformation. The required investment is a daily spiritual practice.
Some of us are overtly spiritual but I know agnostics who’ve invested more consistently in growing their capacity to love than many a true believer. I know a lot of artists who would never think of themselves as spiritual, but I can see that their creative practice is deeply spiritual.
There are as many ways to do the work as there are people in the world. What matters is that we keep making the investment, day after day, in whatever way calls us toward greater love, greater wholeness, and greater truth. Over time, the investment becomes the person we are.
